Category: Design

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio.

In 2013, collaboratively with my research group at the Everyday Design Studio we designed a research artefact: the table-non-table (TNT).

I have lead multiple series of deployment studies with the table-­non-­table between 2013-­2017. The table-­non-­table is a main part of my doctoral work and thesis in which I explore how non-­utilitarian design artefacts mediate human-­world relations through the lens of postphenomenology.

The table-­non-­table is a moving table-­like heavy structure made of about 1000 sheets of stacked paper on an aluminum chassis. It challenges assumptions around use-­centric, utilitarian ideas of technologies and technology design. The table-non-table, informed by the notion of everyday design, manifests an approach that sees interactive artifacts as resources for creative use and reuse. It is our approach to design for everyday competences (for instance competences around using paper as a material is well-known). In previous studies, we looked at practices of everyday design and their composition of material, competences, and meaning (see our TOCHI 2013 paper).

The TNT and its study findings have been mentioned and described in several publications:

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., Odom, W., Verbeek, P., Desjardins, A., Lin, H., Dalton, M., Schilling, M., & de Boer, G. (2018). Deployments of the table-non-table: A Reflection on the Relation Between Theory and Things in the Practice of Design Research. In Proceedings of the ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. (12pgs). [PDF]

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., & Hauser, S. (2015) Unselfconscious Interaction. Interacting with Computers. iwv018. (pp.1-20).

Wakkary, R., Odom, W., Hauser, S., Hertz, G., & Lin, H. (2015). Material Speculation: Actual Artifacts for Critical Inquiry. In Proceedings of the 5th decennial conference on Critical computing: Critical Alternatives. (CC ’05). ACM Press. (accepted, in press).

OdomW., & Wakkary, R. (2015). Intersecting with Unaware Objects. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition (C&C ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 33-42.

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio

I’ve been interested in Design Fiction for a while and worked on several projects around the topic.
 
A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices

In 2012 we began writing a journal article called “A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices” in which we propose opportunities for designers to co-design with DIY enthusiasts, targeted as practitioners in their own right, designing toward or within a design fiction. We see design fiction as a possible means to bridge sustainable practices, interaction design, and practice-oriented design and as a source for interpretation and adaptation. Designers can take on an intermediary (or what we call hybrid) role between design fictions and sustainable DIY practices. For example, Malthus is a DIY home version of aquaponic farming (see images). It was designed by the firm Conceptual Devices. The project aims to show how to build an aquaponic farm with accessible and easy to assemble materials. In this case, the designer is not presenting a design fiction in itself, but a plausible prototype of a proximate future. Below see the published journal article and the project page about the Green DIY study. This project was done in collaboration with Ron Wakkary, Audrey Desjardins, and Leah Maestri.

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., Hauser, S. & Maestri, L. (2013) A Sustainable Design Fiction: Green Practices. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). 20, 4, Article 23 (2013). (34pgs)

See also the project page about the Green DIY study.
 

SFUture – A Sustainable SFU in 2065

In the Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 terms I took a class called ChangeLab and the final project of my project team was to envision and share what SFU (our University) could look like in the future, considering sustainability issues. We created a design fiction of SFU in 2065 in form of documentary-style videos from the future. There is a Youtube Channel, a tumblr blog, and a publication about this project. We had several probes that were things in our design fiction like the unscissors and the nogfobber (see images). My project partners were Audrey Desjardins, Kashif Pasta, and Mike Funergy.

See the four other fun SFUture videos HERE.
 

Material Speculations

The latest work around design fiction and speculative design has been an article that I wrote together with Ron Wakkary, Will Odom, Garnet Hertz, and Henry Lin. It is called ‘Material Speculations’ and we submitted a paper to the fifth decennial Aarhus Conference. More on how this submission turns out will be coming soon.
 

Speculative Design for the AGO

See also our project for the AGO that involves design fiction.
The featured image of this article from HERE.

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, PhD Studies, Spring 2012 – Fall 2013

The visually impaired have been a longstanding well recognized user group addressed in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Recently, the study of sighted dog owners and their pets has gained interest in HCI. Despite this, there is a noticeable gap in the field of HCI with regards to research on and for visually impaired owners and their dogs (guide dog teams).

This research specifically focuses on guide dog teams, presenting an ethnographic study that explores the interactions of guide dog teams revealing differences between their work and off-work relationship. Some of our findings promote design interventions that address issues of awareness, pride, confidence, and trust present in guide dog teams at work but absent in off-work scenarios. We uncover potential for the design of new computer-mediated technologies that can better support the needs of guide dog owners; specifically, enhanced play-interaction through accessible dog toys utilizing smart sensor technologies and mobile apps.

The study has been an incredible experience and taught me a lot about Guide Dogs and their handlers and ethnographic fieldwork. BC Guide Dogs has been a very helpful partner in this work.

We published several works on this project:

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., & Neustaedter, C., (2014). Understanding guide dog team interactions: design opportunities to support work and play. In Proc. of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS 14). ACM, NY, USA, pp. 295-304.

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., & Neustaedter, C. (2014). Improving guide dog team play with accessible dog toys. In Proc. of CHI EA‘14. ACM, NY, USA, pp. 1537-1542.

Hauser, S., Wakkary, R., and Neustaedter, C., (2013) Work vs. Play: A Study of Guide Dog Team Interactions, GRAND NCE Conference, Research Notes, Grand’13.

I have picked up this work in my doctoral dissertation work and taken it a step further by using the lens of postphenomenology to complement human-centered ways of studying these human-non-human teams.

Simon Fraser University, SIAT, Everyday Design Studio, Spring 2013 – present

We began working on a project in collaboration with Art Gallery Ontario (AGO) in 2013. The overall longterm goal will be to design futuristic prototypes (design fictions, speculative designs) for the AGO.  So far, we have visited the AGO 4 times and conducted a participants workshop at the AGO, analyzed parts of the workshop data and have engaged in a first part of an rather unconventional design process.

The workshop was conducted to gather data that can stimulate and inspire the design of future prototypes known in this case as design fictions that will be presented in the AGO as a reflective installation that encourages visitors to construct their own interpretation of the Canadian collection.

Design Workshop

The core goal of this workshop (which we named Eclipse) is to shift the focus of workshop participants to the edges of their experience of a known public place. For example, our workshop aims to elicit memories of smell and qualities of light. How mundane objects like furniture, electrical outlets, motion sensors or ceiling textures influence our participants’ experiences of place. How these qualities shape the memories, perceptual experiences, and public and personal stories that people bring to or create within a public place. Our workshop guides the participants to sequentially explore their memories, sensations, sense of place, and stories.

We published a pictorial, in which we explain this workshop we held at the AGO in its Canadian Art Collection with 13 participants.

Wakkary, R., Desjardins, A., Odom, W., Hauser, S., & Aflatoony, L., (2014). Eclipse: eliciting the subjective qualities of public places. In Proc. of DIS 14. ACM, NY, pp. 151-160. (10pgs, Pictorial)

Next Phase in the Design Process

For our last visit, I and another team member prepared Non-human storyboards telling the story of something non-human living at the AGO. With those storyboards we began filming footage for short films about those things. A rather unconventional but very interesting and fun process.